"Sublunary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one single divinity, supreme over all things, initiates and maintains all the apparently spontaneous movements of inanimate bodies. In the metaphysical stage, phenomena are ascribed not to volitions, either sublunary or celestial, but to realised abstractions—to properties, qualities, propensities, tendencies, forces, regarded as real existences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside; while the characteristic of the positive stage is ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... that they will not bear carriage with me. Yours is one of the few that I could wish of a more robust constitution. It is indeed very probable that when I leave this city, we part never more to meet in this sublunary sphere; but I have a strong fancy that in some future eccentric planet, the comet of happier systems than any with which astronomy is yet acquainted, you and I, among the harum scarum sons of imagination and whim, with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... much easier one than the former; it was more consonant to human frailty; and, therefore, it has met with more success. The gods and goddesses in the Iliad are men and women, endowed with human passions, affections, and desires, and distinguished only from sublunary beings by superior power and the gift of immortality. We are interested in them as we are in the genii or magicians of an eastern romance. There is a sort of aerial epic poem going on between earth and heaven. They take ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... As sublunary troubles always do, the journey came to an end, and the coach deposited us at the door of Mr Butterfield, Aunt Deb's cousin. The worthy merchant—a bald-headed, rosy-faced gentleman, of large proportions, who wore brown cloth knee-breeches, large silver buckles, a flowered waistcoat ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... the manufacture was very prosperous, so that my father was quite at ease about us. After his death we made a home for Edward in London, and looked after him when he used to be smitten with some new idea and forgot all sublunary matters. When he married we went to live at Richmond, and had his dear little wife very much with us, for she was a delicate tender creature, half killed by London. In process of time he fell in with a man named Maddox, plausible and clever, who became a sort of manager, especially while Edward ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then proceeded further to examin the Nature of Bodies in this Sublunary World, viz. The different kinds of Animal, Plants, Minerals, and several sorts of Stones, Earth, Water, Exhalations, Ice, Snow, Hail, Smoak, Hoar, Frost, Flame, and Heat. In which he observ'd different Qualities, and different Actions, and that their Motions ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... philosophers, of whom it is difficult to say which was the more absurd and extravagant. It would appear that the sect was divided into two classes,— the brothers Roseae Crucis, who devoted themselves to the wonders of this sublunary sphere; and the brothers Aureae Crucis, who were wholly occupied in the contemplation of things Divine. Fludd belonged to the first class, and Bohmen to the second. Fludd may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... many of the monuments, clad in blue or yellow, her garments sprinkled with stars, and accompanied by the sun, moon, and five planets; and she was the type of Wisdom, and they of the Seven Planetary Spirits of the Gnostics, that with her presided over and governed the sublunary world. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and set, however, upon an unobstructed horizon, was a new idea gained to me, who never till now had the opportunity. It confirmed the truth of that maxim which tells us, that the human mind must have something left to supply for itself on the sight of all sublunary objects. When my eyes have watched the rising or setting sun through a thick crowd of intervening trees, or seen it sink gradually behind a hill which obstructed my closer observation, fancy has always painted the full view finer than at last I found it; and if the sun itself ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... was not afterwards resumed.—No one here (generally speaking) has the slightest notion of anything that has happened, that has been said, thought, or done out of his own recollection. It would be in vain to hearken after those 'wit-skirmishes,' those 'brave sublunary things' which were the employment and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of former times: but we may happily repose on dulness, drift with the tide of nonsense, and gain an agreeable vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies. The confusion, provided you do not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and Waverley, at the same moment, entreating Mr. Bradwardine to permit him to reply to an affront which seemed levelled at him personally. But the Baron was exalted by wine, wrath, and scorn, above all sublunary considerations. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Coming down to sublunary matters, Aspar said the cave was well provisioned; they had bread, oil, figs, dried grapes, and wine. They had vessels and vestments for the Holy Sacrifice. Their serious want was a dearth of water at that season, but they relied on Divine Providence to give them by miracle, if in no other ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... over the decay and oblivion into which ancient writers descend; they do but submit to the great law of Nature, which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their duration, but which decrees, also, that their element shall never perish. Generation after generation, both in animal and vegetable life, passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and the species ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... him now. He can hardly sink lower in your opinion: he may rise. Very seldom is it that high expectations are so much as tolerably answered. How indeed can they, when a fine and extensive imagination carries its expectation infinitely beyond reality, in the highest of our sublunary enjoyments? A woman adorned with such an imagination sees no defect in a favoured object, (the less, if she be not conscious of any wilful fault in herself,) till it is too late to rectify the mistakes occasioned ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... any "bowels of compassion" it is fit that they should yearn now. This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that ebb where national "extreme unction" must be administered speedily, else the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without the benefit of clergy. I feel as if I would like to get the whole nation on a toasting-fork before a slow fire, and roast it into a realizing sense of what the devil is doing for it. To see ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... poultry-stealing; and he had been remanded for further examination. Meanwhile, he was placed in the strong-room, under lock-and-key,—Roger Manby, as usual, standing sentinel in the passage. Now Roger's red face betokened a lively appreciation of the sublunary and substantial attractions of beef and beer; and it seems probable that the servants' dinner, going on below-stairs, was too great a temptation for even that inflexible constable to resist. Howbeit, when the prisoner should have been produced before the waiting bench, he was nowhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... astrology). The first teaches us how to know the stars and planets, and to find their places and motions. The second directs us to the knowledge of the influence and operations of the stars and planets upon sublunary bodies, and without this last the former is of little use. Astronomy cannot direct and inform us of the secret influences and operations of the stars and planets, without the assistance of' the most sublime art ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... difficult to say which was the more absurd and extravagant. It would appear that the sect was divided into two classes—the brothers Roseae Crucis, who devoted themselves to the wonders of this sublunary sphere, and the brothers Aureae Crucis, who were wholly occupied in the contemplation of things divine. Fludd belonged to the first class, and Boehmen to the second. Fludd may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, and as such merits a conspicuous niche ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... his horse to a sublunary rack—not a thing of fairy land and moonshine as he thought—and slowly took his way, across the flower-enamelled lawn, towards the old smiling mansion. Eager, longing, dreaming, Jacques held out his arms and ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... uncontrolled Abroad and desolating public life. When fierce temptation, seconded within By traitor appetite, and armed with darts Tempered in hell, invades the throbbing breast, To combat may be glorious, and success Perhaps may crown us, but to fly is safe. Had I the choice of sublunary good, What could I wish that I possess not here? Health, leisure; means to improve it, friendship, peace, No loose or wanton though a wandering muse, And constant occupation without care. Thus blest, I draw a picture of that bliss; Hopeless, indeed, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the vitality which informs the physical frame; that must be equally an object of incessant care. Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—he is one with God. Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then comes another, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... All sublunary things of death partake! What alteration does a cent'ry make! Kings and Comedians all are mortal found, Caesar and Pinkethman are underground. What's not destroyed by time's devouring hand? Where's Troy, and where's the Maypole in ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Pillerault. Poulain made his rounds on foot, scouring the Marais like a lean cat, and obtained from two to forty sous out of a score of visits. The paying patient was a phenomenon about as rare as that anomalous fowl known as a "white blackbird" in all sublunary regions. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... remarked, and should be readily granted, that patient plodding is less piquant than the by-play of inertia and revolt. The spirit of Nietsche is doubtless even now yawning mightily at such tedious moralizing; fresh proof of the "dull, gloomy seriousness," the hopeless {6} stupidity of our sublunary virtue. I believe that Nietsche has frankly confessed the real grievance of his class of mischief makers. They are impatient and easily bored; while the business of establishing a healthful and vigorous society is ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... new draught upon his strength the morrow might bring. He would just lie down for an hour; then he would be fresh for whatever service might be required of him. With this prudent resolve, he threw himself along the bed in the spare-room, and was oblivious of everything sublunary until sunrise. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... have respectively the same power over sublunary bodies—for instance, to thicken air, inflame it, produce in it clouds and storms; to make phantoms appear in it; to spoil or preserve fruits and crops; to cause animals to perish, produce maladies, excite tempests and shipwrecks ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... sublunary lovers' hearts Fed on loose profane desires, May for an eye Or face comply: But those remov'd, they will as soon depart, And show their art, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Apparition has been so publick in other Countries too, that it seems to convince us the Devil is not confin'd to England only, but that as his Empire extended to all the sublunary World, so he gives them all Room to see he is qualified to manage them his ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... pangs more acute, than is usual in similar cases; but to his moral worth it was death. An infliction of this nature, falling on a comparatively virtuous man, is productive of few evil consequences. It may give a holier turn to his thoughts—wean him from sublunary vanities—and purify his nature. On an utterly depraved man, its effects may be fleeting also; for few can here expect a moral regeneration. But falling on Delancey, it was not thus. The slender thread that bound him to virtue, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... but it pours," is a true proverb. I have often noticed, in the course of my observations on sublunary affairs, that events seldom come singly. I have often gone out fishing for trout in the rivers of my native land, day after day, and caught nothing, while at other times I have, day after day, returned home ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... swallowed up in politics for the first, I hope for the last, time in my sublunary career. It is a painful, thankless trade; but one thing that came up I could not pass in silence. Much drafting, addressing, deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition) I leave you Wreckerless. As soon as the mail leaves I tackle it straight. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trifling would be its value! how inadequate as a medium of exchange for the other productions of nature, or of art! If all the diamonds and other precious stones which have been collected from the decomposed rocks (for hard as they once were, like all sublunary matter, they too yield to Time), why, if all were remaining on the earth, the frolic gambols of the May-day sweep would shake about those gems, which now are to be found in profusion only where rank and beauty pay homage to the thrones of kings.—Arts and manufactures consume a large proportion of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... You see, Giles looks upon you in the character of nurse, Miss Garston, and forgets you are young too. "Depend upon it, they have forgotten the time," I said to him: "when two girls are chattering their secrets to each other, they are not likely to remember anything so sublunary." You should have seen Giles's expression of lordly ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gradually drawn from the moon in the heavens to this sublunary scene; and he was puzzled and alarmed by the appearance of the man in shiny boots. "A holtercation," he remarked afterwards, in the servants'-hall—a "holtercation with a feller in the streets is ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole motley scene in ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... does cast his tusks, but only in the juvenile state, when they are not bigger than lobster's claws; and the pair that succeeds these is permanent, and has to last him for life—perhaps for centuries—for no one can tell how long the mighty elephant roams over this sublunary planet. When the tusks get broken—a not uncommon thing—he must remain toothless or "tuskless" for the rest of his life. Although the elephant may consider the loss of his huge tusks a great calamity, were he only a little wiser, he would break them off against ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... cajoles himself into the notion that a man either unlettered or inexperienced can form a just judgment of a play and actors, must at once be convinced of his error by reflecting that "the drama is an exhibition of the real state of sublunary nature;" and that "to instruct life, and for that purpose to copy what passes in it, is the business of the stage."[6] To understand this well, demands not only some book-learning, but that experience which, though ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... fast as we well can, the materials for that chapter. Your government began to write this chapter in blood; and for two years past we co-operated with you in the same way. Nothing stands still within the great frame of nature. On every sublunary thing mutability is written. Nothing can arrest the destined course of ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... sensible verses those," said the Corporal, approvingly; "and yet mischief's often done before the amends come. Body o' me, it makes a man sick of his kind, ashamed to belong to the race of men, to see the envy that abounds in this here sublunary wale of tears!" said the Corporal, lifting up ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how did they behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. 'It was appointed,' says our Philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and finding himself mistaken, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... tremble." This is also the mint where the Genii keep their bullion. The entire caverns of this monstrous block of rock are full of gold and silver, and diamonds, and all precious jewels[68]. A more mortal and sublunary mystery was now pointed out to me. This was a small block of rock about fifty feet high, of the shape of the accompanying drawing; the lower or under part where it comes in contact with the ground, being so exceedingly small as not to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... and gone. Lady Verner had seen the fallacy of sublunary hopes and projects. Lady Mary Elmsley was rejected—Lionel had married in direct defiance of everybody's advice—and Lucy was open to offers. Open to offers, as Lady Verner supposed; but she was destined to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "it has steadied and amplified my conception of sublunary affairs. It has shown me that motley is much more profitable wear than the edged ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die, untouched by workhouse hands—this was her highest sublunary hope. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... your ignorance, but disgrace your native country before a stranger and an Englishman'; and Waverley, at the same moment, entreating Mr. Bradwardine to permit him to reply to an affront which seemed levelled at him personally. But the Baron was exalted by wine, wrath, and scorn above all sublunary considerations. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... two evils, always to choose the lesser of the two. In this case I think there can be no question as to which is the lesser of the two evils between which we have to choose; because if we were foolish enough to choose death it would mean the end of all things sublunary for us; whereas if we choose life, even with the condition attached, there is always a sporting chance of something happening to make matters better for us. For myself, I would rather live, even here, than die the death, whether slow or quick. My advice, therefore, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... diffused A Spirit of activity and life, That knows no term, cessation, or decay; That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 150 Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe In the dim newness of its being feels The impulses of sublunary things, And all is wonder to unpractised sense: 155 But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... trust, will not wonder at my meditations on these sublunary objects, when they consider that they are the seaman's guide, and from them the greatest sources of nautical information ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... have men imprisoned?" says William Quirke, senior. "My lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." The most influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued, persuaded, all in vain. William Quirke has a wish to remain in this sublunary sphere. His spirit is not anxious to take unto itself the wings of a dove, that it may fly away and be at rest. Like the dying Methodist, whose preacher reminded him of the beauties of Paradise, he likes ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... and, still more strange to say, her father and Ole Thorwald agreed to accompany her; also an ancient piece of animated door-matting called Toozle, and a black woman named Poopy, whose single observation in regard to every event in sublunary history was, "Hee! hee!" ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Annes; While the still busy world is treading o'er The paths they trod five thousand years before, Thoughtless as those who now life's mazes run, Of earth dissolv'd, or an extinguish'd sun; (Ye sublunary worlds, awake, awake! Ye rulers of the nation, hear, and shake!) Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day; In sudden night all earth's dominions lay; Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend; Eternal ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... compartment on the railroad trip over and back, they went in a third-class car. Praeger declared that it was good enough for him, and he didn't wish to spoil his troupe! His wife now held the purse-strings, as Roesie was too engrossed with her art and Hugh too absorbed in his love to notice such mere sublunary matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... which you seem averse to. Remember the Sun rises, comes to its Meridian Height, and stays not there, but declines in a Moment. Let this admonish you to reflect on the constant Revolution of all sublunary Affairs, and the greater is your Glory, the nearer you are to your Declension. We are taught by every Thing we see, that there is no Stability in the World, but Nature is in continual Movement. The Sea, which o'er flows the Sands has its Bounds set, which it cannot ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... of Giles Scroggins' life, at once and most completely establishes the wholesome moral as to the fearful uncertainty of all sublunary anticipations, and stands forth a beautiful beacon to warn the over-weaning "worldly wisemen" from their often too-fondly-cherished dreams of realising, by their own means and appliances, the darling projects of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... it more powerfully affect my soul, that I may live in constant readiness to take my flight to yon bright realms above. But is that bliss prepared for me? O let me feel it. This afternoon my brother Richard died. Alas! how uncertain are all sublunary things! He was just entering life, and lo! he is snatched away. Surely the all-wise 'I AM' saw evil gathering, and kindly removed him to a happier clime, safe from impending danger. Well, my Richard is gone; while I, four years ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... and decayed furniture, broken casements, falling roofs, and long ranges of uninhabited and uninhabitable apartments, winding stairs, dark galleries, and long arcades—all combined to present to the mind in strong, though gloomy colours, a correct picture of the transitory nature of sublunary splendour. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach to me, now once more preaching; 75 I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offered 80 To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy of their divinities: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... paper lay there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... now the happiness of rejoining his family under their paternal roof, yet, like all sublunary blessings, it was but of short duration. His favourite daughter Maria, who along with her sister had joined the convent of St Matthew in the neighbourhood of Arcetri, had looked forward to the arrival ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... but to what a different purpose! Whitman's moth is mightily at his ease about all the planets in heaven, and cannot think too highly of our sublunary tapers. The universe is so large that imagination flags in the effort to conceive it; but here, in the meantime, is the world under our feet, a very warm and habitable corner. "The earth, that is sufficient; I do not want the constellations any nearer," he ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dark brown rocks, honey-combed in many places by the action of the waves. The islands are fertile, abounding in hogs, cattle, horses, mules, and many other agreeable things; while in order that, like other countries in this sublunary world, they may lay claim to a portion of disagreeables, they are infested with mosquitoes and endless varieties of loathsome insects; and the fish that are found around the coasts are not fit for food. So much for the country—now for the natives:—They are tall, robust, and ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... down, after the fashion of these people, when Mbango, whom Europeans called "Pass-all," King of the Urungu, who extend up the right bank of the Ogobe, passed away from the sublunary world. King Pass-all had completed his education in Portugal: a negro never attains his highest potential point of villany without a tour through Europe; and thus he rose to be the greatest slave-dealer in this slave- dealing scrap ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... noiseless hinges, until it stood wide open on a black interior. When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and resolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable reason - perhaps by a spring or a weight - the ponderous ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Charlotte,' said her brother, in a mock consoling tone. 'You and I know what is good for us, and despise sublunary vanities.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... superior in Spain, which, 'among other curiosities, contain this question—'Can any one have the presumption to say these savage pagans have yielded anything more than an inconsiderable recompense to their benefactors, in surrendering to them a little pitiful tract of this dirty sublunary planet in exchange ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... and when thought proceeds from a point beyond the plane of differentiation it can be determined along the line which makes for English as readily as that which makes for French, or any other tongue. It is they of the soul-world who convey the thought, it is we of the sublunary world who translate that thought into our own language. The Hebrew prophets were almost uniformly instructed by means of clairaudience. But as I have already said there are degrees of clairaudience, as of any other psychic faculty. The danger is that a false ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... unattainable information to the living. This creed, however, has not been limited to those ancient times, for, in our own days, many sane persons still profess to believe in the possibility of summoning the spirits of the departed from the other world back to this sublunary sphere. When they do so, they have always hitherto, as far as I have heard, encouraged these spirits to perform such silly juggling tricks, or requested them to answer such trivial and frivolous questions, as would seem to my humble apprehension to be almost insulting to ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... had taken place in the family of the principal banker of the town, Khushhal Chand. Sewa Ram Seth, the old man, had lately died, leaving two sons. Ram Kishan, the eldest, and Khushhal Chand, the second. The eldest gave up all the management of the sublunary concerns of the family, and devoted his mind entirely to religious duties. They had a very fine family temple of their own, in which they placed an image of their god Vishnu, cut out of the choicest stone of the Nerbudda, and consecrated after the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the rank, or the influence, or the prestige, or the general fitness of things. You are above all such sublunary ideas. You would clean Mr. Gresham's shoes for him, if—the service of your country required it." These last words she added in a tone of voice very similar to that which her husband himself used ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... verandah with a letter in his hand. It was in an official envelope. As the habit of these fellows is, he had shown it to the first white man he came across. That man was our friend in the arm-chair. He, as I knew, was not in a state to interest himself in any sublunary matters. He could only wave the peon away. The peon then wandered on along the verandah and came upon Captain Giles, who was there by an extraordinary ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection against the project, is a concluding argument of the constancy and solidity of their sure gain by it; a never-failing argument, as he tells us, among ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the host of inferior deities interposed between the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of sublunary affairs. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor. "All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good. We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause."[199] He therefore commits to the junior deities the task of creating animals, and of forming "the mortal part of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... call to Dazle our Eyes, but that if any Colour be to be Ascrib'd to them as they are Lucid, it seems it should be Whiteness: For the Sun at Noon-day, and in Clear weather, and when his Face is less Troubled, and as it were Stained by the Steams of Sublunary Bodies, and when his Beams have much less of the Atmosphere to Traject in their Passage to our Eyes, appears of a Colour more approaching to White, than when nearer the Horizon, the Interposition of certain Sorts of Fumes and Vapours make ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... conclude with, in those unparalleled upper rooms; Grand-Aunt Meiningen and many other stars and rainbows witnessing; even the Margravine of Schwedt, in her high colors, was compelled to be there. Such variegated splendor, such a dancing of the Constellations; sublunary Berlin, and all the world, on tiptoe round it! Slow Torchdance, winding it up, melted into the shades of midnight, for this time; and there ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it had passed the span of life usually allotted to those animals, and beyond which their further existence is equally a nuisance to themselves and to every one else. As to the best way of "terminating its sublunary existence," Mr. Dodgson consulted two surgeons, one of whom was Sir James Paget. I do not know what method was finally adopted, but I am sure it was one that gave no pain to pussy's nerves, and as little as possible ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... awkward interview," he reflected, "if Mrs. Glendower could have taken herself opportunely out of the world. If we may trust the usual form of mortuary resolutions, Divine Providence is habitually pleased with the removal of mortals from this sublunary sphere; and in this case ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... fabulous residences, have led to no result other than most admired disorder and confusion. It is as vain to seek their whereabouts, as it is that of the garden of Eden or the Isle of Avalon. They have not, and never had a place on this sublunary sphere, but belong in that ethereal world which the fancy creates and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the alloy; and many who pass for very fine fellows on shore are looked upon as arrant pretenders afloat. Jack was making his way towards the shop of Mr Woodward the bookseller, when two seamen in a happy state of indifferentism to all sublunary affairs came rolling out of the street which debouches on the Common Hard near the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... human soul; Estranged from whom, the countenance divine Of man, disfigured and dishonour'd, sinks Among inferior things? For to the brutes Perception and the transient boons of sense Hath Fate imparted; but to man alone 50 Of sublunary beings was it given. Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers At leisure to review; with equal eye To scan the passion of the stricken nerve, Or the vague object striking; to conduct From sense, the portal turbulent and loud, Into the mind's wide palace one by one The frequent, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... without being included and moves without stirring from the spot; creating also its own duration, and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion.[104] Then, by degrees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more, down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth, growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for the last time. So understood, the causal relation between God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded from below, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... sincere, a truly pious member of the Christian church cannot be an intolerant partizan of certain modes of faith. There dwells within his breast a deeper sentiment than that which is inspired by the worldly and sublunary distinctions of sect. And Lord George Murray, seeing his young and blameless rival, the Duke of Perth, brave, honourable, and moderate, had shown greater zeal for true religion had he not availed himself of an unworthy plea to base upon it ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... earth to interpose betwixt them. It is a perfect rest from perplexing doubts and fear, from all sense of God's displeasure, from all the temptations of Satan, the world, and the flesh. And it is an eternal rest. This is the crown of our crown. Mortality is the disgrace of all sublunary delights. But, O blessed eternity, where our lives are perplexed by no such thoughts, nor our joys interrupted by any such fears! Our first paradise in Eden had a way out, but none in again; but this eternal paradise hath a way in, but no way out again. The Lord heal ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... as the sun is the greatest and most universal benefactor,—his influence and heat is the very renovation of the world. It makes all new, and green, and flourishing; it puts a youth upon the world, and so is the very spring and fountain of life to all sublunary things. How much is that true of the true light, of the substantial, of whom this sun is but a ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... subterranean globe. The air, according to Paracelsus, is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils. Some writers, professing to follow Socrates and Plato, determine nine sorts. Whatever or wherever the supralunary may be, our world is more interested in the sublunary tribes. These are variously divided and subdivided. One authority computes six distinct kinds—Fiery, Aerial, Terrestrial, Watery, Subterranean and Central: these last inhabiting the central regions of the interior of the earth. The Fiery are those that work 'by ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the other," answered Plato, "because where there is no ideal, there can be no image. There are doubtless men in other parts of the universe better than we are, because they stand on a higher plane of existence, and approach nearer to the idea of man. The celestial lion is intellectual, but the sublunary irrational; for the former is nearer the idea of a lion. The lower planes of existence receive the influences of the higher, according to the purity and stillness of the will. If this be restless and turbid, the waters from a pure fountain become corrupted, and the corruption flows ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Spread their vast solitudes around, And intervening rocks and rills The eye with very transport fills. The bosom wells with joy serene While viewing all the lovely scene, The spirit soars on airy wings Above all sublunary things. I peer into the depths profound Of the cerulean around, And ether's far-off heights I scan, As if, to feeble finite man, The power of vision here were given To view the battlements of heaven. But, though I gaze ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... of glory, which still grew wider, and less defined, as he approached the surface, of the cloud. But, to his utter amazement and supreme delight, he found, on reaching the top of Arthur's Seat, that this sublunary rainbow, this terrestrial glory, was spread in its most vivid hues beneath his feet. Still he could not perceive the body of the sun, although the light behind him was dazzling; but the cloud of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and visit with healing all regions of this British Empire,—which now writhes through every limb of it, in dire agony as if of death! The enterprise is great, the enterprise may be called formidable and even awful; but there is none nobler among the sublunary affairs of mankind just now. Nay tacitly it is the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British Premier in these times;—and I cannot esteem him an enviable Premier who, because the engagement is tacit, flatters himself that it does ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... removed from this sublunary sphere, the Rev. Charles Denham, through the interest of Lord Patronage, whose fag he had been while at Eton, obtained the vacant rectorship. This was considered by the good folks of the district to be a fortunate circumstance, and things went smoothly on as in the good old time. But ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... truly and actually redeemed in the full sense of the word; where people might enjoy a foretaste of heaven-the very space above their heads being to them at all times a road connecting the heavenly mansions with this sublunary world. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... sublunary happiness is not untinged with misfortune. I have no right however to exclaim. The misfortune to which I am subject, however nearly it may affect me, makes no alteration in the substance of my destiny. I ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... the far-removed landscape a tawny stain grew into being on the lower verge: the eclipse had begun. This marked a preconcerted moment: for the remote celestial phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary service as a lover's signal. Yeobright's mind flew back to earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself and listened. Minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon perceptibly ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... more sublunary than the course of the planets. But I have it. His device will serve the purpose. Do you remember Eugene confounding him with Friar Bacon because he was said to light a candle without flint or steel? It was true. When he was a bachelor ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... utter collapse, which is the immediate result of a blow in the parts about the waistcoat, was beginning to pass away, and Sheen now felt capable of taking an interest in sublunary matters once more. His ear smarted horribly, and when he put up a hand and felt it the pain was so great that he could barely refrain from uttering a cry. But, however physically battered he might ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... When beyond this sublunary sphere, and the vail is removed which now hides from our view the realities of the unseen world, with what different emotions may we suppose parents will look upon their mission on earth. It will indeed seem wonderful that they should have been thus intrusted with ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Chinese ideas, the sun, moon, and planets influence sublunary events, especially the life and death of human beings, and changes in their colour menace approaching calamities. Alterations in the appearance of the sun announce misfortunes to the State or its head, as revolts, famines, or the death of the emperor; when the moon waxes red, or turns pale, men should ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... lovely evening, when from thy fairy hills thou didst so hospitably smile on me, a poor lonely, insignificant stranger! As I traversed to and fro thy meads, thy little swelling hills and flowery dells, and above all that queen of all rivers, thy own majestic Thames, I forgot all sublunary cares, and thought only of heaven and heavenly things. Happy, thrice happy am I, I again and again exclaimed, that I am no longer in yon gloomy city, but ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... playing for you, good reader; whose capricious taste, varying from ink-stand to paper, and from that to books, and every other portable thing—all 'moveables that I could tell you of'—he has in his little person those elements which constitute both the freshness of our sublunary mortality, and that glorious immortality which the mortal shall yet put on. Gazing upon his fair young brow, his peach-like cheek, and the depths of those violet eyes, I feel myself rejuvenated. That which bothered Nicodemus, is no marvel to me. I feel that I have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... spiritual gold, which is mere fire; consequently, the common and universal first-created mover, from whence all moveable things have their distinct and particular motions; and also from the moon, as from the wife of the sun, and the common mother of all sublunary things. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Succession of Ages, was the Condition, and such at length the Fate of this Kingdom, destroyed after a longer Continuance than any other can boast, by the Abuse of its own Powers; a sure Argument that all created Beings, all sublunary Institutions, however wisely composed, in the very Essence of their Creation, and in the very Rudiments of their Formation, comprehend, at the same Time, the Seeds of Dissolution: Yet it is not more remarkable than true, that in the most boisterous Periods of this Kingdom's ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... design, and in the spirit of that divine benevolence in which it sprung, he could endure to fix on the melancholy and odious character of the scene, the contemplation which was vainly attempted to be diverted to any other of its aspects. What, indeed, could sublunary pomps and glories be to him in any case; but emphatically what, when his object was to redeem the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... province of Scotland is termed, and the Lothians, was of importance both in times of foreign war and domestic discord. It was frequently beseiged with ardour, and defended with obstinacy, and, of course, its owners played a conspicuous part in story. But their house had its revolutions, like all sublunary things: it became greatly declined from its splendour about the middle of the 17th century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the last proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to part with the ancient family seat, and to remove himself to a ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... forbid it, Heaven! Why should I be sorry to leave a world in which I have met with nothing but misfortunes and all their concomitant evils? I shall on the contrary endeavour to divest myself of all wishes for the futile and sublunary enjoyments of it, and prepare my soul for its reception into the bosom of its Redeemer. For though the very strong recommendation I have had to his Majesty's mercy by all the members of the Court may meet with his approbation, yet that is but the balance of a straw, a mere ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow |
